ZTE Presents Axon 9 Pro Flagship With Notched Display

Chinese smartphone manufacturer ZTE has announced its newest flagship smartphone, the Axon 9 Pro. The new top model of the company will come with a notched OLED display and Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 845 soc.

One very notable change that ZTE has made is the lack of the 3.5 mm audio jack in favor of USB Type C. That’s definitely remarkable since the company has praised the analog audio capabilities of its previous Axon smartphones in the past. Another strange thing is the screen resolution: the Axon 9 Pro will come with a Full HD+ resolution of 2248 x 1080 pixels, which is noticeably less sharp than the 2560 x 1440 pixels of some previous Axon models. The weird Axon 9 Pro resolution is due to the fact that the company has chosen for the equally as weird 18.7:2 aspect ratio, most likely due to the notch at the top which houses the front camera and a couple of sensors.

According to ZTE, the phone ships with an RGB-sensor in the notch which should allow for on the fly adjustment of the screen’s color temperature depending on your conditions.

In terms of other specifications, the Snapdragon 845 chip will be accompanied by no less than 6 gigabytes of internal memory, as well as 128 GB of storage. Unfortunately, the storage is not expandable via MicroSD. There’s a dual camera installation at the back, with a primary snapper of 12 megapixels with 1.4 µm pixel size. The secondary snapper is meant for wide-angle shots of 130 degrees and has a resolution of 20 megapixels. The battery has a capacity of 4000 mAh.

The glass design has been IP68 rated and is thus waterproof, and wireless charging is possible as well.

Another big change is the price point, as it looks like ZTE is heavily increasing its margins with a price tag of $649. For comparison: the ZTE Axon 7 that was released in 2016 with a 1440p display retailed for just $399. The release date is set for later this year, and it’s most likely that ZTE will ship the phone with Android 9.0 Pie out of the box.